catapult magazine

Lost in Translation.

My wife and I just recently rented Lost in Translation. I liked it for the most part. It had lots of really poignant, awkward moments that it left poignant and awkward. I like that Sophia Coppola didn’t try to explain everything. But, I hated the ending. Bill Murray and …what’s her face (I suppose I could look it up in the amount of time it takes to add this parenthetical statement) had such a fun (non)relationship. I liked that there could be sexual tension without any sex. For an hour and a half I relished that. But the kiss at the end was more than just a sexless kiss goodbye. Why did Coppola feel the need to break that tension? The movie was so different than most of the other movies I’ve seen up to that point, but it ended in a cliche’.
Anybody else disappointed?
I thought that somebody had started a thread on this. Maybe it was a review. I’ll have to check.

“her face” was Scarlett Johanssen, although you’d have to check the spelling on the last name there. I think I’m close.

I made some comments on the film in last year’s asterisk awards issue, that may be what you’re thinking of. I have to say, the kiss didn’t bother me. It didn’t make any particular impression actually, as I’d completely forgotten about it. All I recall about the movie (prior to your post) was all that lovely, painful, poignant, wonderful, awkwardness. I certainly didn’t experience the ending as some kind of betrayal, or sell-out.

What exactly do you object to? The fact that the kiss was not “sexless”? That would be a worse cop-out from my perspective. It would deny both the painful and joyful reality of the fact that people are sexually attracted to one another. The fact they are married to other people? We’ve clearly seen that those relationships are not healthy and in real danger of failing. That doesn’t excuse the kiss from a moralist perspective, but this isn’t a morality play. These are real (from the film’s perspective) people struggling with really powerful feelings and temptations, and all of that is brought into focus by the heightened emotional moment of saying good-bye. The fact that the characters would allow themselves to express something of their attraction to one another in the relative “safeness” of that moment (i.e. they likely will never see one another again) doesn’t seem gratuitous to me. Again, I don’t remember the kiss specifically, but I do remember being satisfied with this film overall, not perhaps as an image of healthy, normative relationships, but of people doing their best to plod forward, burdened with the broken relationships, they, and to some extent all of us, have – and finding a little bit of genuine joy in one another’s companionship. The fact that they don’t (again, as far as I recall) dump their respective partners and run off to Kontiki or wherever together seems like enough of a victory to me within the limited scope of the story this very contemplative film is telling.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think there can be “sexual tension without any sex” as you put it. Sex is so much more than the act of copulation – it is relational, imaginative, playful, anticipatory… I think I simply understood the kiss to be a natural extension of the sexual tension, as opposed to a contradiction or resolution of it. It’s like the gospel says about thinking a certain way about another person being adultery. We’re all guilty, kiss or no kiss. Giving in to those feelings is, of course, a potent recipe for disaster, but so is denying them. I guess that that’s mostly what I took away from the movie.

Any of this make sense to you, Norb? Or am I missing your point? It’s delightful chatting with you, as always, regardless of whether we agree.

Good chatting with you too Henry.
I understand what you’re saying, though it still bothers me. When Bob Harris spends the night with the lounge singer, it’s empty sex. It is the act of copulation. His relationship with Charlotte, on the other hand, has oodles of sexual tension that I was hoping was going to stay sexual tension. You mention in your post, Henry, that sex is more than physical. It’s, among other things, anticipatory. I was hoping that the movie would stay in that realm. To show yearning for what it is. Yes the Bible says that looking at a woman lustfully is adultery. But I can’t help but think that self-control plays a role. I loved that Bob and Charlotte felt that tension and very obviously struggled with it. I just wish they kept struggling. When Bob is driving to the airport and jumps out of the car to run to Charlotte who he happens to see walking down the street, Coppola had two options. She could have them embrace with a kiss loaded with sexual release, or she can be true to the theme of the movie up to this point and make the meeting awkward, quasi-comical. I guess as soon as I see him leave the car it became a cliche’ for me, but I much would have preferred the awkward ending. I think that’s because life is more often awkward for me than resolute.

Sorry Norbert, I disagree with you too. That kiss seemed perfect to me. The best thing about that relationship to me was not the awkwardness, but the genuine feeling that the two had for each other. Their “romance” could not have happened at any other time or in any other place, and their kiss was an honest expression of their feelings for each other at a time when both knew that nothing could come of it. It was a beautiful impossibility—the kind of impossibility that becomes terrible if you try to make it happen. I guess Norbert felt that the kiss represented them making something happen. I saw it as a confirmation of the beautiful impossible.

The one thing that bugged me about this excellent movie was the arrogant way the American characters strode around Tokyo expecting everyone to speak English and making absolutely no effort to learn Japanese language or ways. But that’s not really a criticism of the movie, is it?

Probably not Dan. Unfortunately.
I like the idea of the beautiful impossibility. I don’t think that fixes the ending for me, but it does give me another way to look at it. Maybe that’s what Henry was alluding to as well.